REVIEW: THE SIGNAL

Yes, I know, ANOTHER LONG HIATUS from this site. Sorry about that (do I sound like a broken record yet?), but it's not like I'm letting anyone down since I see that this site has failed to receive A SINGLE VISITOR for months! Well, I'm about to change all that starting now!

First, some of the top keywords that will drive traffic to this site that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS POST except to make it show up in search results, and perhaps generate more views courtesy of today's major news headlines.

Divides Gaza Strip into two parts...
Gaza's underground tunnel in sights of Israeli warplanes...
Cheney: Israel not seek US OK before invasion...
MORE OBAMA DRAMA: RICHARDSON PULLS OUT
UPDATE: Autopsy planned in death of John Travolta's son...
Prince to Release Three Albums in 2009...

There. I'm glad we got that out of the way. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

It's unusual for Wifey and I to watch horror films. It's not because we're a bunch of wussies (ok, on second thought, maybe we are just a little bit), but because the plots are just so mundane, the acting horrible, and the entertainment value (watching people get tortured after their body parts are cut off and eaten) just isn't something we enjoy signing up for on most quiet evenings.

However, we decided to buck that trend for Halloween 2008 and so we rented 2 horror movies. The first one we watched was called The Signal, which looked great in the previews we saw!

Here's the trailer:


HUBBY'S REVIEW

I've always been drawn to any kind of movie that has to do with the "end-of-the-world" and apocalyptic themes given what I know to be fact.

On the surface, this film presented an interesting concept or at least one I had never seen before. The Signal asks us to consider what it would be like if all telecommunication devices broadcast only a mysterious transmission ("the signal"), turning people insane.

The film is broken up into three "transmissions" (chapters) each of which had different directors during shooting. Each part manifests elements of one of the following genres: visceral horror, black comedy, and mystery-love story.

The fact that it's told in three distinct parts from four completely different directors is not "unique," but something that is not lost on the viewer. In fact, it actually works against the film.

The first "transmission" slowly built to a crescendo and succeeded by drawing us in and keeping us on the edge of our seats. Yet, the second "transmission" completely ruined the film as this particular director that it would be fun to make it a comedy of sorts, and that eliminated any chance that the audience would remain emotionally involved with the characters the rest of the way. At least the third "transmission" sort of returned to the mood and style of the first, but it spent most of the time reestablishing that feeling instead what should have been its turn to build off of it to an exciting conclusion.

Whose idea was it to go with four different filmmakers anyway!?! It was a terrible decision to go that route in the opinion of this humble critic. I will say that one interesting tidbit that I enjoyed learning about this picture is that it was completed for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival on a budget of only $50,000 and shot over the course of 13 days! That's pretty remarkable.

All in all, I'm not surprised that I was disappointed by a horror film, but given this movie's original premise I was mad that it didn't deliver like I expected it to.

I'm giving it only 1 Ben & Jerry's ice cream out of 5.